004. Have You Lost Your Mind?
"Wow... this thing is so fucking stupid."
Thud! The moment the unknown power filling his body drained away, Kanghyuk dropped the sledgehammer he'd been clutching.
"A sledgehammer. Is this for real?"
Kanghyuk's dream had always been to be a hunter straight out of a knight's tale — gleaming armor, a shield on his arm. The Toughness trait had seemed to nudge him another step toward that dream, too. But that dream now looked like it had sailed off across the sea for good.
"It's just... the sledgehammer lacks a certain... style..."
"Well... honestly? I can't really argue with that."
And although this was the first constellation he had ever met, what he felt was less intimidation than an odd, unaccountable warmth.
"A sledgehammer. A sledgehammer, of all things!"
Clearly, this constellation's weapon was no sword.
"I've got a feeling he swings around something blunt and nasty."
"Oh... so I can't even open my mouth now? Not even to talk?"
His whole body had gone slack and his legs were trembling, so Kanghyuk gave up on browsing shields at Hunter's World and decided to head straight home.
"Ah... my hands are shaking too."
He barely managed to hail a taxi through an app, then slumped down against a wall. The monsters in his imagination and the monsters in the real world were different species entirely.
"Can I actually do this?"
He'd been steeping in the dream of awakening and becoming a famous hunter, but one real face-to-face with a monster and the confidence had simply drained out of him.
"It's my first time, okay? My first time. Who's good at anything right out of the gate?"
When the summoned taxi pulled up, Kanghyuk abandoned any thought of returning to Hunter's World and headed straight home.
"Why has my whole day turned into one long variety show?"
Without a single thought given to washing up, he collapsed onto his bed and dropped straight into a dead, senseless sleep.
"How much of the Descent time did you use?"
"Exactly one minute."
"One minute? I swung the sledgehammer three times, and that ate up a whole minute?"
"It takes time for your body to adapt to the Descent state, so there's nothing to be done about it."
"So to land a single hit, I have to keep a minute in reserve?"
"Sorry? What was that?"
The quiet mutter had apparently carried to Ping as well.
"Nothing, nothing. Just noting that I'll have to spend it carefully."
"Exactly right. You have only nine minutes left now, so you really must use it sparingly."
"Yeah, got it. By the way — can you set up a quest that makes someone do a specific action?"
"A specific action, my lord?"
"Like making them buy something. That sort of thing."
Ping flitted around me, deep in thought.
"It's possible, but I don't believe we could force it."
"What if you used a penalty?"
"A simple action involves no hardship or adversity, so there would be no way to attach a steep penalty to it."
"So what you're saying is, if I look at a quest and don't feel like doing it, I can just not do it?"
"Yes. If it's a matter of buying something, even the penalty would be something trivial — a single sneeze, say — so if it didn't suit you, odds are you'd simply skip it."
"Well, as it happens, there is something I absolutely must use the Descent for."
Ping settled onto my shoulder. "Something you absolutely must use it for?"
"Yeah. My trait demands steady training over a long stretch of time, so I have to stay focused on training."
"Toughness? Isn't that just the trait that makes your body sturdy?"
I nodded.
"That's part of it. But it's really a trait whose effects swell the harder and longer you train compared to anyone else. The greater the intensity and the longer the hours, the faster your physical abilities climb — far faster than other people's."
"So it's different from a trait that simply makes your body hard?"
"Right. I'm not strong out of the gate, but subject myself to training more extreme than anyone else's, and both my growth speed and my ceiling run higher, shall we say. I just figured that out far too late."
"Extreme training?"
"You see this?"
I held Breaker up before Ping's eyes.
"Yes. It's utterly monstrous."
"Anyone else swings this thing ten times and every muscle in their body starts screaming. Me? I can swing it a thousand."
"Then isn't that an incredible trait?"
I shook my head.
"Not from day one — you build up to it, raising the weight little by little. It took me well over ten years past my injury before I could even wield this. Of course, without the injury it would have come faster."
"So even when you train far more than anyone else, every last bit of it still goes toward growth."
"Exactly. Which is why extreme training has to come paired with a serious calorie intake."
"That certainly tracks. But what does any of that have to do with you using the Descent?"
"Eating well while you train takes a great deal of money."
"Money?"
Ping made a little circle with a tiny finger.
"A great deal more than what I have right now."
"But what does that have to do with you using the Descent?"
"Watch closely a little later, and I think you'll see."
"Grr! Honestly!"
And Ping began yanking my hair again.
"Yeesh. I must've dozed off. What time is it?"
Groping through the darkness for his smartphone, Kanghyuk found it was already pushing 11:30.
"Ah... so much for tonight's sleep."
The moment he flicked on the light and took a gulp of water from the fridge, the sensation from earlier that day came creeping back.
The feeling that his body was no longer his own. Flesh slipping free of control. It was the Descent.
What? What's going on? What is this? There's nothing here right now!
Kanghyuk couldn't even force out a sound. Terror of the most absolute kind came flooding in, and yet the heartbeat of the body he had lost was perfectly, eerily calm. That gulf between the two dragged him deeper into the swamp. The breathing inside his head turned ragged and frantic, while his actual breathing never changed at all.
Has anyone ever heard of a constellation seizing your body?
Kanghyuk's runaway body fetched the smartphone and opened his banking app.
Why the banking app?
His fingers swept every won of the 50 million he had saved up over the years straight into his stock account.
What are you doing?
The sheer absurdity of the situation made him forget his chattering fear entirely. A little later, though, he would be trembling for a very different reason.
Next Core Tec? Why are you searching that up?
His fingers fumbled at first — and then, without further ceremony, they went and bought up Next Core Technology with his entire net worth.
You absolute lunatic! What do you think you're doing? My money! My 50 million won, saved over my whole life! My shield! My future!
My lord Constellation, my lord Constellation, please, spare me. Not that money. Please.
It hasn't even executed yet — please, cancel it, just cancel it!
Kanghyuk begged desperately, and then begged again. But a short while later, his entire fortune had become shares in a company called Next Core Technology.
What kind of junk stock is this? There are plenty of others. Others!
While Kanghyuk wept tears of blood on the inside, a voice came out of his own mouth.
"No matter what happens — do not sell. Sell all of it on March 17th!"
Then the strange sensation vanished, and his body began to feel like his own again.
"You insane constellation! What is this?! My hard-earned money! My money!"
Kanghyuk snatched up the smartphone and checked the stock app.
"It dropped one percent in that little window! My money! My 500,000 won! You son of a bitch!"
And right on cue, the stock began to fall even harder.
"Aaagh! It's bleeding! It's bleeding out!"
The instant Kanghyuk scrambled to dump every share, the vile sensation returned.
Aargh, you wretched constellation! It's not your money, so what kind of lunatic buys junk stock like this?! I'm selling! I said I'm selling!
His body, moved by force once again, simply powered the smartphone off.
"Aaaaargh! Damn it! Damn it all! You're trying to turn me into a beggar!"
Kanghyuk powered the phone back on.
"Come on, boot up. Faster."
The time it took for the screen to light up stretched into an eternity.
"Did it crash? Is it broken?"
Kanghyuk could practically see his money burning right in front of his eyes.
"Aaagh! It dropped even more!"
The stock sat five percent lower now than when he had bought it.
"Please, just let me sell!"
The very moment his thumb went for the sell button — punctual as ever — there it was again. That sensation.
What on earth did I ever do wrong to deserve this?
"It's all so things go well for you, so just settle down and wait."
Go well? What exactly is going to go well? What did I do wrong in a past life? Why are you doing this to me?
This time the body switched the phone off and hurled it clean out of the house — and only then did control return.
"You think I'd give up?"
Kanghyuk went outside and combed through every last corner of the alley before he finally recovered his phone.
"I should have at least bought a laptop or a tablet!"
He kicked himself for it — blissfully unaware that a laptop or tablet would only have met the very same fate.
"Sell! Sellll!"
His desperate wish went unfulfilled. The ferocious battle between the Kanghyuk trying to sell and the Kanghyuk trying to stop him ended, in the end, in Kanghyuk's defeat.
"Try to sell that stock one more time, and this time I'll smash the phone to pieces."
No hands had been laid on him, but Kanghyuk, utterly spent by the endless string of Descents, collapsed back onto his bed with one parting remark.
"You could at least leave me food money, you jerk!"
Thump. And Kanghyuk sank once more into a deep, deep sleep.
"Ah, right. I didn't leave him any food money."
Sheepish, I scratched the back of my head.
"My lord, you have only one minute of Descent time left! What in the world have you been doing?!"
Ping hammered away at me with those bean-sized fists.
"Whew. That was cutting it close. Still, it was absolutely necessary. Bought 50 million won worth, so it should end up around 3 or 4 billion, give or take?"
"Is that company really that remarkable?"
Ping stopped and stared up at me.
"No. They're con artists. The whole thing goes under later."
The tiny fists resumed their assault.
"Then why on earth did you buy it?! Are you genuinely trying to ruin him?"
"Oh, it goes under, all right — but only after the stock climbs nearly a hundredfold first."
"I'm sorry? A hundredfold?"
Ping's eyes went perfectly round.
"Right. Everyone believed it would be the very first company to develop gate barrier technology — thanks to a hunter they paraded around as having the relevant trait."
"And then?"
"They swindled people with talk of developing gate barrier tech, but with nothing real to show for it, the ending was one spectacular, bottomless crash."
"Humans have no ability to handle mana, after all. But how on earth do you remember all of that?"
"The day it crashed was my birthday — March 18th. I got tangled up in a gate incident, and for a while afterward the news was nothing but that company, until it went into full freefall on my birthday. Everyone around me lost their money, so nobody was in any state to celebrate it. That's why I remember."
"So that's why you used the Descent?"
"Yeah. Out of everything I know, there's no information better than that one. Can't help feeling like luck's on my side this time."
Ping shook its head.
"I'd call it less luck and more payback for having the board flipped on you."
"Payback?"
"Yes. The constellations who had all but won let it slide, since it meant shaving off a generous chunk of the Constellation of Ruin's divine power — but that doesn't mean it left a pleasant taste. When you turned time back, I'd wager you made a point of working things at least a little to your own advantage."
"Hmm... could well be."
I couldn't claim to know the constellations' circumstances in any detail, but the theory sounded convincing enough.
"That said, I'm not exactly sure when the climb starts, and I've nearly burned through the Descent time... so what do I do now?"
"Let us pray."
Ping said it suddenly, hands pressed neatly together.
"Ping?"
"Hurry up and join in, my lord!"
"To whom, exactly?"
"Anyone! Anyone at all!"
Perhaps a single day had simply held too much; somewhere along the way, Ping's personality seemed to have changed.
"Aaaaargh!"
Kanghyuk shot awake in a cold sweat. He felt as though he'd dreamed of flinging his money into empty air.
"My money!"
Scrambling for his phone, the first thing Kanghyuk did